An elevator car door is driven between open and closed positions relative to an entrance to a cab by a door operator mounted on top of the cab. The cab, door operator, and a cab support or sling are collectively referred to as an elevator car. The hatch door at each floor of a building an elevator car is serving is unlocked by the presence of the car at the associated floor, and a clutch carried by the car door has "open" and "close" vanes which engage hatch door drive rollers to respectively open and close the hatch door in unison with the car door.
The elevator car door must be prevented from being opened by a passenger in the cab, unless the elevator car is close enough to a floor to enable safe egress. There are many different arrangements for accomplishing a car door locking function, but in general they are complicated mechanically and/or costly to implement, with most locking the car door to some fixed point on the elevator cab adjacent to the car door entrance. It would be desirable, and is an object of the invention, to provide a new and improved elevator car door lock which is simple mechanically, has a low manufacturing cost, easy to add to an elevator car, and which operates without objectionable noise.